On Iranian High school Teachers’ Perception of Dynamic Assessment and its Implementation Challenges in Iran

The present paper reveals Iranian teachers’ perception of dynamic assessment (DA) and its implementation challenges in Iran. DA, based on Vygotsky (۱۹۸۹)’s sociocultural theory of mind (SCT) and his concept of zone of proximal development (ZPD), has been recently introduced in education. At the heart of DA procedure is integration of instruction and assessment and the rationale behind this merge is that in this way simultaneous understanding and promoting of learners’ development is realized. Having a look at the assessment procedure in Iran’s educational system, we find that still traditional static assessment procedure is dominant in the form of mere separation of instruction and assessment sessions with no interaction between the examiner and the examinee in the latter with the rationale that any kind of interaction in assessment procedure distorts the nature of assessment. In this study, twelve Iranian male and female high school teachers and five university ones were interviewed semi-structurally to elicit their views on DA and its implementation challenges in Iran’s educational system. Results of the study showed that although all the participants believed that there are serious challenges in the way of DA implementation in Iran, they acknowledged that it is superior to the traditional static assessment and is worth trying.

Keywords:

dynamic assessment , traditional static assessment , zone of proximal development , Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory of mind